"What's her name?" Evangeline looked back at me as she opened her front door, a curious brow furrowed, causing her forehead to wrinkle subtly. I was pulled aback when she asked me this, my tongue feeling as though it was stuck to the roof out my mouth. It's been a year since I was able to say her name, and still left my tongue numb. It was like that in Evangelines' company, too: inebriating, free, and spontaneous. I knew that she felt this when she looked at me and I turned into stone right in front of her.
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"Who do you mean?" I asked dryly as I followed her inside, her small apartment was snug and smelt of rosemary and fresh baked macaroons. She had paintings on every wall, piles of books on nearly every table and shelf, empty wine glasses on the coffee table, and her cat eyed me curiously from underneath the couch; her bright blue eyes seizing me up slowly. "I've been to Pasadena a few times for the scenery, I mean, would you look at the view?" I sneered as I prodded through the curtains of the living room window, showcasing a rather dreary looking evening sky.
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"You came all the way to Pasadena with me just for the scenery." She nodded, repeating after me as if she didn't believe it and she grabbed a tub of ice cream from the freezer along with two spoons, handing them both to me before heading over to the record player she had on the shelf in the living room and plopped in a vinyl; Janis Joplins' 'piece of my heart' playing subtly in the background as she spoke. "I just don't believe that, Bowie," she said as she plopped the tub of ice cream open whilst joining me in the couch, "you came with me for a reason, I don't exactly pique you to be the spontaneous type."
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"If you must know," I retorted as I stabbed my spoon in the raspberry sorbet before letting it ooze onto my tongue as she watched me, "her name was, well," my tongue felt heavy once more, "let's just call her 'she'." I decided as I noticed my hand tension around the spoon and I sat it back down in the tub of ice cream. "She lived not that far from here, I met her at Altadena liquors, which can explain my loathing for cheap wine. She quoted Hemingway and she smells of lavender... which explains why I hate the smell of lavender now and how I've not read a Hemingway paperback ever since. I figured that maybe if I stood here long enough with you, someone who made me feel as she did in five months in the span of one day, I'd see this as just Pasadena, and not where I met her."
